From Heaven to Earth

This weekend I had the chance to meet up with fellow urban sketcher Matthew Brehm for an epic sketchcrawl through some terrible weather.

Our first refuge from the unrelenting drizzle was the Cathedral Marie-Reine-Du-Monde. Matthew is an expert on the architecture of Rome; he runs a sketching school there every summer. So this had to be kind of amusing for him – as our’s is a 1/3 scale model of St. Peters Basilica. The incredible shrinking cathedral.

My next brainstorm was the newly re-opened Biodome. Here was a chance to escape to a tropical forest. Unfortunately, a few bazillion families had the same idea. None-the-less; we managed to make a few quick impressions inside the giant greenhouse. At one point  when I was drawing the Alligators – I knew I was blocking this kid who really  wanted up to the rail – but hey – I’m working here kid! Suck it up. You can see it later on the ‘tubes.

The Biodome, with it’s artificial environments enclosed in their separate pods, reminds me of this (terrible) old Canadian tv show “The Starlost”. The details are blurry – it took place on a vast starship with all these geodesic domes each containing a preserved civilization. Some kind of giant space ark designed to save earth’s cultures. Every episode had the cast entering a new ‘city in a bottle’ and facing some crisis or other. Possibly some childhood memories of the show inspired the designers of our ‘dome?  In any case  – it does make a fine climate controlled sketching environment.